Amid all the fish kills and rising gas prices, here’s a feel-good story for the season from the kindly folks at Scientific American. It seems that thanks to freaky weather, we’ll be paying more for groceries:
“It’s a worrisome situation with prices this high,” said Dan Gustafson, the director of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s Washington, D.C., office. “The year ahead is what I think is the real concern at this point. … It’s not by any means inevitable that prices will come down,” he said.
The food price index from the Rome-based U.N. agency measures the price fluctuations for commodities including cereals, dairy, meat, sugar and oilseeds.
Last month’s average food price index came in at 215, whereas the peak in 2008 was 213.5. In December 2009, the figure was only 172.
The recent high is the culmination of a steady increase in prices over the past six months. It marks the highest food price index since food price figures were first recorded 30 years ago.
FAO attributes the upswing in prices to factors including the crop failures caused by a string of extreme weather events and high crop demands from an ever-increased global population. Many experts have linked the series of floods and fires with climate change.